Black Friday

I've never understood people who get up at ungodly hours the day after Thanksgiving to go shopping. It seems to bring out the absolute worst in people. I don't care how great the specials are, you couldn't get me to set foot in a Best Buy or Wal Mart at five o'clock in the morning even if they were selling bundles of hundred dollar bills for a quarter. And if I needed any extra incentive not to join the holiday madness that takes place on this day every year, this article illustrates just how insane the annual shopping spree has become...

Brian Clark, 27, of Bristol left empty-handed after the televisions and
computers he’d eyed as Christmas gifts were snatched by earlier shoppers.
Alarmed by a recent shooting of a customer waiting outside a Connecticut
Wal-Mart store for Sony’s PlayStation 3, which are almost impossible to
find, Clark had tucked his Glock pistol in a holster under his jacket and
put extra ammunition in his pocket before heading out early Friday. “Not
that I’ll probably need it, but just in case. You never know these days,” he
said.

The article also perpetuates one of the popular myths about Black Friday. Every year you read how the day after Thanksgiving is no longer the busiest shopping day of the year. Ask anyone who has ever worked in retail, and they will tell you that is poppycock. The Saturday before Christmas might have higher sales, but "shopping" and "buying" are too entirely different things, and there are definitely more people out today than there will be on December 23.

As much as I love Christmas, this is the one day of the day of the year I can sympathize with people who hate it. And Miles Davis' contribution to the Christmas catalog, "Blue Xmas (To Whom It May Concern)," sums up those "bah humbug" feelings as well as any song I've ever heard. It has been released on a couple of different compilations, most recently Jingle Bell Swing. It is also available on Miles Davis and Gill Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings.

Miles Davis - "Blue Xmas (To Whom It May Concern)" (mp3)

post title by Steely Dan